


Breaking Up On Me

by Prix



Series: It's Always Sunny in Domino City [5]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, M/M, Miscommunication, Slice of Life, The Plot Thinnens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 03:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16547873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: The gang communicates and miscommunicates. The seeds of future conflict are planted.





	Breaking Up On Me

_Mutou Residence, above Kame Game Shop, Domino City, Japan_

  


 

Yugi knows that he awakened sometime in the middle of the night. He tries to remember why. He glances over at his phone and sees the soft white clock display against the black screen as he tilts it toward himself. He lets it go again and exhales heavily. He has been trying to get up earlier, to go down and eat breakfast with his grandfather, and to pore over the records and manual bookkeeping his grandfather has been doing for the years he has owned the game shop. He knows that there’s probably some better way to do it, online or something, but for the moment it gives him something to challenge himself with every day when nothing else seems to arise. It even feels a little mysterious, the way the Puzzle and what his life had become for a while had once. It feels like coming down backward.

 _“Good morning, Pharaoh,”_ he thinks communicatively. He isn’t sure there is any such thing as _not_ thinking communicatively unless the Pharaoh simply grants it to him.

 _“Are you accounting again, today?”_ the Pharaoh asks. He appears to Yugi across the room, translucent and arms folded across his chest.

Yugi smiles sleepily. The Pharaoh doesn’t appear to be blinking away sleep or collecting himself at all, as if he is always awake and aware. Yugi knows there are times when he seems dormant, far away, but he doesn’t know if anything he truly does could be qualified as _sleeping_. He wonders what the Pharaoh makes of his wondering, if he can hear or know it, but he doesn’t directly as him. He reaches out and laces his knuckles together, pushing against them to cause a soft crackle. He sits up and drops his legs over the side of the bed.

“You’re bored, aren’t you?” he asks softly but out loud.

“Bored?” the Pharaoh echoes as if he does not know what the word means. Yugi knows he is playing dumb, politely.

“Nothing has happened in a while that really feels like it’s… for you, because of you,” Yugi explains. “Just feels like we do everything I need to do and that’s it. Must feel kind of… dull for you. You’ve always had such an exciting life. Existence,” he explains, correcting himself a little sheepishly as he curls his bare toes against the carpeting on his bedroom floor.

“It sounds like you’re speaking for yourself, too…” the Pharaoh points out. Yugi thinks he might be scolding him a little.

“It just feels like if this your – our – destiny or something that it would, you know, happen a little faster.”

“You’re uneasy,” the Pharaoh replies, lowering his arms down in his spiritual projection as if there is some weight and feeling to him after all.

“It feels like something _stopped_ , and I don’t know if it’s something… we should want back or not,” Yugi replies, growing a little flustered at having brought it up at all.

“You’ve become a bit… intoxicated with it, haven’t you?” he asks. There is a solemnity to it and his gaze drops toward the floor, perhaps toward Yugi’s feet or to nothing in particular.

“With what?” Yugi asks, standing up as he tries not to fidget or apologize impulsively.

“The danger. With who or what I am… and what comes with that. You and your friends have nearly lost your lives because of me more than once,” the Pharaoh points out.

“What are you saying?” Yugi asks. He feels like he has crept out onto a ledge that he isn’t equipped to stand on, especially not barefoot and first thing in the morning.

“I’m saying accounting is not the worst thing I could see you doing, Yugi,” the Pharaoh chides fondly. He reaches out as if to place his hand on Yugi’s shoulder, but the moment when Yugi ought to have felt touch, there is no pressure. The Pharaoh’s visible form gives way and vanishes in a momentary haze of light. Then he is standing alone again, the Pharaoh back inside his puzzle and a warm, familiar presence at the center of his chest.

He reaches down for his phone again, shifting his weight more comfortably and hearing his knee pop in a way he thinks it probably shouldn’t do at 18. He unlocks the phone screen and frowns as he notices the missed call icon he had missed earlier. Lately, he doesn’t get as many calls or texts. Anzu and Honda are busy with school. Jounouchi has been working at a job that makes him tired, and he’d been sick recently. Yugi wonders and hopes at who it might be, and when he sees the name he hardly believes it at all.

“Huh,” he intones softly.

 _“What is it?”_ the Pharaoh asks, apparently still near in some meaningful way.

“I got a phone call from Seto Kaiba… while I was sleeping. In the middle of the night.”

He feels a lot of things flood through him. Resignation, a spark of hope, excitement, confusion. It almost all falls under confusion.

 _“If you speak of Set, he will seek about to devour…”_ Yugi hears, unbidden in his head.

He smirks.

“And what is _that_ supposed to mean?”

_“It means you’re wishing for trouble, and you’re courting chaos, Yugi.”_

“I’m sure it isn’t that serious. Kaiba doesn’t care about destiny or anything like that,” Yugi says as he sits back down on the edge of his bed, a bit overtaken by the surprise of receiving the call.

“ _There are worse things than staying with your grandfather, Yugi.”_

“I never knew you hated him so much,” Yugi teases softly.

 _“I never said that,”_ the Pharaoh replies – wryly, Yugi thinks. 

“I wonder what _he_ wanted,” Yugi says, mostly to himself. He checks his text messages and there is nothing. He goes back to the call screen and notes that the call only lasted a few seconds. It had never gone to voicemail. He frowns. “I wonder if it was an accident,” he murmurs, but it doesn’t seem like Kaiba to butt-dial someone.

 

 

\- - -

  


 

_Jounouchi’s Father’s Place_

  


 

After a lot of water and one more round of throwing up, this time into the toilet bowl, Jounouchi had finally gone to sleep. He wakes up the following day – not particularly sure what time it is – to the sound of a rattling pounding on the door. He blinks. He winces even though it is pretty dark in his room. The noise doesn’t stop.

“Hey Pops!” he groans. He doesn’t hear any stirring of a response. Of course not. He holds his hand across his forehead to try and shield himself from some of the impact of the sound but it doesn’t help. He drags himself out of bed and heads for the door, trudging along. He almost trips over his shoes. He finally glances through the peephole and is relieved to at least know who is on the other side. Blearily, he reaches up and unlatches the door. He pulls it back and winces at the suddenly flood of light in his eyes.

“Hey,” Honda says to him, hands in his jacket pockets as he steps through the door presumptuously. He is one of the few people who had ever had both exposure and interest to work up the nerve to come over the threshold of Jounouchi’s home without first checking about the presence of his father. “You didn’t answer your phone. I was worried.”

Jounouchi reaches up and rubs beneath his eye, noticing how droopy and tired it feels even still. Then he remembers the bruise and winces just in time for Honda to notice it.

“Yeah, I… didn’t hear it,” Jounouchi confesses honestly.

“Man, what the hell happened to you?” Honda marvels and chides at once. He reaches up and pulls Jounouchi’s arm out of the way to get a look at the bruise that must have visibly formed along his cheekbone.

Jounouchi resists softly, but he gives up after a second. Without any real struggle, Honda is stronger than him. A little bit.

“Hey, it’s nothin’. Just got a little rough last night, that’s all,” Jounouchi assures him. That is his first response. Then he thinks about it a little more clearly, remembering exactly who had caused that confrontation in the first place. He narrows his eyes at Honda. “What’re you doin’ here anyway? You were too busy to get me home.”

“I was _working_ ,” Honda insists. “I got over here as fast as I could manage it. Wanted to make sure Kaiba held up his end of the deal.”

“Oh yeah? What’d you get out of it?” Jounouchi asks.

“That’s not what I meant,” Honda says as he looks around the apartment. Perhaps he is looking for signs of his father now or a reason to bail. Jounouchi couldn’t blame him for either.

“Well,” he says, a little bitter in spite of himself, “next time just leave me to the alley rats, okay? Would be easier to deal with,” he replies with a bit of bitter humor. Honda lets go of his arm, but then he notices that he is staring at him with a thoughtful look on his face. He reaches up to touch his own jaw, perhaps in sympathy. “What?” he prompts.

“You said ‘got a bit rough,’” Honda repeats. “Got a bit rough with _what_? What happened to you after I sent you home last night.”

“Don’t worry about it, I said. Just don’t _ever_ send me home with Kaiba again. Got it? Simple,” Jounouchi insists.

Honda gives him a look that lasts a little too long and then turns toward Jounouchi’s room.

“You need help cleaning up after yourself?” he asks over his shoulder.

“No,” Jounouchi says, but he follows Honda without question.

“How’d you manage that?”

“Most of the throw-up is out on a sidewalk somewhere by Kaiba’s office,” Jounouchi replies honestly. He hears his bedroom door creak open softly.

“On second though, I think you do need my help,” Honda says as he appraised the room Jounouchi has inhabited since he was a child.

“You’re a jerk,” Jounouchi says as he presses in at the center of Honda’s chest, moving past him and beginning to pick up some dirty clothes off the floor. He frowns deeply as his head throbs, but he goes slow and keeps on going. Honda joins in to help, so he can’t be _too_ much of a jerk.

 

 

\- - -

  
  


_Kame Game Shop_

  
  


Yugi is pressing stubborn, tired buttons on the cash register, selling a pack of cards and some dice to a child even shorter than he still happens to be, when Anzu opens the door and steps inside. He smiles more brightly for the kid in front of him than he might have seconds before.

“Thank you. Come again,” he says pleasantly as he hands over the plastic bag with the child’s purchase and receipt in it. The kid runs off excitedly with someplace to be. For a second, he feels some nostalgia for the time when games were simply games, but then his hand reaches up and rubs beneath the downward-facing pinnacle of the puzzle against his chest a bit guiltily.

“Yugi,” Anzu greets him when they are alone in the little shop. She comes up to the counter and meets his eyes. “You wanted to see me?” she asks, eyebrows raising a little expectantly.

“Yeah, I… wanted your opinion about something,” Yugi says, glancing around as if it makes him a little uneasy. He probably shouldn’t make a big deal of it, though. He wants Kaiba to be their friend, but he knows how much Kaiba has resisted committing to the idea for years. Plus, it being in the middle of the night and not ringing long enough for Yugi to even realize what had happened is just weird.

“What is it?” Anzu asks. Her gaze falls to the puzzle on his chest. He realizes he is still rubbing just beneath it and drops his hand. He knows that Anzu is pretty invested in the Pharaoh’s well-being, and his skin flushes a little. He doesn’t mean to get her hopes up. He still feels like he has let all of them down a little bit, no matter what the Pharaoh says about wishing for danger.

“No… it’s… not about that. Him, I mean,” Yugi says. He glances off to the side, reaching out in his mind and hoping that he isn’t embarrassing the Pharaoh too.

“Then what is it?” Anzu prompts. He wonders if she is less interested now, but it would be rude to ask her that. She is still standing there, after all. He shuffles his weight a little and reaches down into his back pocket, fishing out his phone as he recenters his gaze, first down at the screen and then back up at her.

“Last night,” he explains, “in the middle of the night, I missed a call from Kaiba.” There isn’t any point in making in more complicated than it actually is. He waits to see if there is some kind of immediate reaction, watching her eyes.

“Kaiba?” she asks. Her eyebrows go a little bit concerned and asymmetrical. Her nose crinkles as if there’s just a little bit of distaste. Her face achieves something of a more neutral expression as she leans forward over the counter slightly. Then, she turns and instead hops up on it, scooting back along until she is sitting beside where Yugi stands so they can both look at the screen. She picks up his phone without asking and looks at the entry in his call log he has pulled up. “How in-the-middle-of-the-night?” she asks simultaneously.

Seeing the time stamp, she looks over at Yugi, her face closer now.

“Did you find out what he wants?” she asks.

“No,” he replies clearly.

“Did you check the news?” she asks, a bit sarcastically.

“I don’t think he’s announced a new tournament. I’m sure if he had Grandpa or I would’ve heard about it by now,” Yugi says with a little bit of a dull smirk.

“Isn’t all just games with you two…” she says. Then she reaches out and taps the top plane of the Millennium Puzzle. Yugi feels the slight tug at the chain that holds it around his neck and his smirk warms a little at the slightest, stolen feeling of scandal. Then his face goes slack and red or pale – he isn’t sure which.

“Hey,” he complains at Anzu. Before he even gets the rest of it out, she looks amused at him. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. You tell me,” she says. She lifts her hand with a sort of jazz-hands wriggle of her fingers. “Destiny, gods, monsters… unless all that stuff about it mattering has just been you playing make-believe this whole time,” she says, “which would be _really_ disappointing.”

“Yeah. I’m trying not to disappoint,” Yugi says a little glumly. She pokes the corner of the small pyramid again before shifting at her waist to draw her legs up. Yugi can’t help that his eyes drop a little, but she is really good at keeping her skirt from showing anything higher than her upper thigh. He swallows hard and tries to concentrate and realizes she is giving him his phone back.

He reaches out and takes it, glad for the focal point.

“So are you gonna call him?” she asks with an encouraging nod.

“Should I? What if it was just a mistake?” he asks.

“Then he’ll just hang up on you,” Anzu says. “He’s not very nice.”

“True,” Yugi agrees. He looks down at the phone and realizes that Anzu is one step ahead of him. He presses the green button and holds the phone up to his ear. For the sake of avoiding any distraction, he turns his back but stays close to Anzu. He thinks he can feel her breathing near his neck and takes a discretionary step away. He finally hears something other than the ringing tone on the other end of the line and is grateful for self-discipline winning out.

“Yes?” Kaiba answers curtly on the other end of the line.

“Hi,” Yugi says, holding just a little on the word before lapsing into a moment of silence. He continues when Kaiba doesn’t immediately pick up the ball. “It’s Yugi.”

“I know who it is,” Kaiba replies, impatient as ever. Yugi frowns just a little and knows that he really shouldn’t have to try _this_ hard to have a conversation with him after all they _have_ been through together, whether Kaiba likes it or not.

 _“Do you want me to speak with him?”_ the Pharaoh asks in his mind.

 _“No!”_ Yugi insists quite firmly. He’s relieved that it doesn’t slip out aloud as easily anymore.

“What do you want?” Kaiba asks while Yugi is distracted.

“Well, I,” Yugi says, gathering his concentration, “... wanted to know what _you_ wanted. Last night.”

“Nothing,” Kaiba says.

“But you called—”

“I know I did,” Kaiba cuts him off again.

“Well, if you’re going to call someone in the middle of the night, you ought to have a better explanation than that,” Yugi instructs him, as if there is still any hope at all that Seto Kaiba might learn some manners.

“Well, I don’t. Or, if I did… it was a mistake,” Kaiba says, the latter allowance at least something that sounds like a human being composing a thought to interject in a conversation.

“A mistake,” Yugi repeats, surprised or hoping that it will net him something out of this.

“Even I make them from time to time,” Kaiba replies, slipping back into cold and intractable.

“So let me get this straight,” Yugi says, glancing back over his shoulder to see Anzu watching his end of the conversation unfold. She has pulled her legs up onto the counter and sits there patiently. He looks back at the display in front of him at nothing in particular. “You’ve had my phone number since the Battle City tournament – probably before,” he says, noting that Kaiba has always had a surplus of resources and easy information on him, “and you’ve _never_ called me by mistake. Until today.”

There is a slightly longer pause on the line. He hears Kaiba’s breathing, but it is normal, steady.

“I thought you might know something,”

“Know _what_?”

“I changed my mind, and it doesn’t matter. I took care of it,” Kaiba says. Then, before Yugi can say anything, the call ends. Yugi draws the phone back from his ear like it has given him a shock of static.

“That…” Yugi says, trying to settle on an appropriate insult that won’t make him feel too guilty later.

“He hung up?” Anzu asks.

“He hung up,” Yugi confirms.

“I told you,” she says. “Lasted longer than it could have.” She smirks with some vindication.

“It sounded like there was something wrong, though,” Yugi admits.

“Of course there is. But he can afford to have it cleaned up for him, whatever it is. It isn’t your _destiny_ to be his unpaid intern,” Anzu points out looking down at her fingernails and shrugging.

Yugi is silent for a moment, pursing his lips together. Anzu looks up at him, hand dropping to her lap.

“You’re going to try to find out what’s wrong with him, aren’t you?” she asks.

“I thought you’d be proud of me,” Yugi says, giving her a rather pitiful look that is at least partially mocked up.

“I would be if I didn’t think it was hopeless,” Anzu says with a roll of her eyes.

 

 

\- - -

  
  


_Khan el-Khalili, Cairo, Egypt_

  
  


A young man walks through the marketplace in the cool of the evening. In places, it looks like a tomb, in others, a church, and in others still, a mosque. He sees people of Egyptian heritage all around him, but there are foreigners – like him – of the tourist variety, too. He knows that he is not a tourist. He knows that there is something much more unsettling about his presence here. He senses that this place feels familiar but is fundamentally _wrong_ to something deep inside him he cannot know, cannot hear or see or touch. He wanders with tired feet and something that he might call a headache except there is no pain. It doesn’t hurt; if anything, he feels spurred on by some unnatural inability to feel pain – except in the soles of his feet.

He breathes the warm, dry air and exhales heavily. His perception is clear, but the memories he forms seem like they are painted in watercolor, etched in faceted glass, rather than being entirely clear. He does what he can, though. He takes in the beautiful sights around him. What more can he do?

He is here, but he cannot recall why he bought a plane ticket. He remembers peering out the window on the plane. He remembers the steady vibration of the flying machine lulling him to sleep. He remembers taking a call from his mother. He remembers telling her he arrived in Egypt just fine. He remembers that she was not particularly worried. He does not remember the following day at all.

It should alarm him more than it does, but this has been his life for several years now. In a way, it is easier simply to give in. He has become almost superstitious about it. The more he considers the possibility of asking questions, the further it seems the other part of him – the part which he is walled away from almost entirely – drives him from anything that might resemble help. He is stranded, but he sees absolutely beautiful things.

He reaches down. He touches the ring against his chest. He does not even consider taking it off, but he feels its warm prongs brush against his flesh as if they are warning him, as if they can point inward on their own. His fingers curl back from it, recoiling but only slightly. He blinks and his eyelids grow heavy. He opens them.

With a few blinks, Bakura clears away the sleepy focus of his host, his descendent, his companion – whatever he happens to be. He had let the boy take a walk, and as usual, he had done a decent job of getting him to the right place without explicit instruction. Some corrections may have to be made, but it will do.

He tugs at the necklace which holds his Ring around his neck. He takes the structure in his hand and holds it with familiar certainty. At last, he can get to work.

There is all sorts of noise around him. There are smells, too. Most of them are pleasant, but it is a cacophony which could not have existed in his time. So much has changed. Yet, he has purposefully not put himself in the lands of the dead. No, he is interested in locating what he will need to procure something brought into the land of the living.

Abruptly, he notices that there seems to be a rumbling vacancy in his stomach. Ryou has neglected to feed himself again. Sighing heavily, Bakura retrieves Ryou’s wallet and fishes out some money. He walks over to the first vendor that is selling anything hot that smells palatable. There are some things Ryou eats which Bakura finds disgusting when he takes control of their form – even in their aftertaste. If there is any benefit to Ryou’s being so easily taken with a certain sickliness when Bakura is quite busy, it is that he will not have to taste something terrible like _ketchup_.

He keeps moving while he feeds himself, getting the lay of the marketplace for himself. He feels familiarity in his steps, but what he sees is new and for his consciousness alone. There is some backtracking involved, but this feels like a fair approach. He has bided his time. He has waited this long. Another walk for young Ryou will not make a difference.

When he finishes eating, he finds a small fire burning in a decorative enclosure. He feeds the parchment wrapping of his food into the flame. It blackens away into nothing. Then he returns his attention to the Ring. Clearing his focus once more, he closes his eyes, exhales everything, and focuses on what he wants, the clearest path to that which he seeks.

When he opens his eyes, the Ring responds beautifully. He gives it a sharp flash of a smile and then begins to follow the extended point, hearing the other pieces of the golden tool clatter together with something that, over time, begins to seem like a melody.

The marketplace is filled with many, many people. More people than there _need_ to be in such a place at all. It is enough to annoy him at times, but never does it annoy him more than when the point he is following suddenly seems less certain, more off-course. It rattles and then seems to snuff itself out, like the motor of a modern vehicle running out of fuel.

“Cursed thing,” Bakura says to the item, aware of the irony and disregarding it. He shakes it by the Ring itself and tries to clear his mind again, staring at it. He finds a niche for himself in the crowd, a place to stand at the edge of a square beneath the light of a neon sign advertising something or other. He sees the red and green glint touch the gold. He _hears_ something that piques part of his interest, but he is single-minded and irritated enough that he does not look up at first.

 _Pat-pat-pat-pat…_ Getting faster.

The Ring rattles and he feels some relief, but he still gives it a skeptical, frustrated look. One of the prongs begins to ring itself. Perhaps it is in the direction of the…

 _Pat-pat-pat…_ Getting closer. Dusty. Digging in. Like the sound of a bit of cloth rhythmically dragging itself along the ground.

A prong of the Ring shoots outward, only to fall back down again with impotence that would be hilarious if it did not so greatly inconvenience him.

“Damned thing. Give me what I need! I even brought you home. What more do you want? I need you to tell me something useful, unless that is too difficult to mana– _uhn_ ,” Bakura grunts as something collides with him, full-force, and yet does not knock him off his feet. “Can you _watch_ where you’re—” he growls caustically, in English because he knows that his way of speaking this land’s tongue might draw more attention than using the other. Then he realizes that not only has this clumsy pedestrian run into him, _it_ seems to be holding on, arms up over his shoulders and connecting behind, leaning in.

This is something that has not happened for more than three thousand years.

This is something that has not happened since before the Pharaoh locked him away, since before his people burned and died.

He is being embraced. _Hugged_.

This person is _hanging_ from his shoulders by its – his – own arms.

“Bakura!” he hears as he goes through this whole line of delayed recognition. “It is so good to see you.”

He realizes quite quickly that there is only one person stupid enough to try this.

“ _Marik_?” he demands.

“I knew it was you. You were so far away, but I knew it was,” Marik says. He seems to be slowly drawing himself back down onto his own feet and taking his own weight back, but it is not fast enough for Bakura’s liking. He has no choice but to reach up and take the other man by the rib cage and pry him back to arms length. He looks him in the face simply because there is nothing else to do with such an affront and shock to his system.

“... Yes,” he agrees. He is, in fact, himself. “Marik,” he says patiently, as if he wants to begin to explain the awkward and precarious situation in which they find themselves. There had been a time when Marik had been his closest ally in defeating the Pharaoh. That time had been one of _convenience_ , and it had ended. It had ended, and Marik had apparently been fully willing to let the Pharaoh _go_. He could just kill him, but he does not have all the information, and he had not been intending on taking anyone’s life in full view of a square full of people.

“What are you doing here? You didn’t come all this way to find me, did you?” Marik asks, talking too fast for Bakura’s ears. “You shouldn’t have… if you did.”

“I didn’t,” Bakura says, finding that as easy a way over this wall of words before him as any. He looks down at his Ring hanging from his neck, knowing that Marik is likely the only person in hundreds to know the exact significance of it. That means he is _dangerous_. That means…

The Ring has stopped behaving badly now. One of its points tugs itself directly toward Marik, plain, simple, and clear. Bakura looks up at Marik’s eyes and narrows his own. A sly smile forms over his lips as he sees Marik’s fond grin.

“... But perhaps I did,” he says, playing off that smile with the trade confidence of any thief worth his salt.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is derived from "Turn Me Up" by Carly Rae Jepsen. This fic is a disaster, it's fine. 
> 
> The place in Egypt is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_el-Khalili 
> 
> Half-assed research is my specialty. 
> 
> Please comment. I require validation. Kudos are good, too!


End file.
